The Ballad of A Marine
by Hereshey
Summary: As the wheel of time cranks on and the Austro-Hungarian Empire grudges through the daily grind of being an interstellar state in the mid-26th century and while the economists in Vienna worry, the bureaucrats and aristocrats politic, the Dreamer stirs and the Walk-Brass grows tired of Lorkhan's insurrection. The film between Kalpas wears thin and weird shit is about to go down.
1. Prologue

**The Ballad of A Marine**

* * *

**Isaac McCudden**

**HM's 57 Commando New Zealand Royal Marines**

The story of Landfall, told from the perspective of a UNSC serviceman, first-hand.

* * *

Fantastic and extraordinary things usually happen in people's lives, be it winning the lottery, hooking up with a boy or girl for life, finding a long lost relative, buying that house you always wanted or beating a competitor at an auction for that classic car you always dreamt of since you were five. Fantastic things always happen in one's life - it is inevitable - and man's tampering cannot avoid the inevitable, as I well know. Sometimes you can get more than one extraordinary event in your life. Fate loves to spring the extraordinary upon the unsuspecting.

What I am about to tell you is just _**one **_extraordinary event of my life... an event that I doubt anyone at this table would believe for a second - and so I ask of you, to keep a clear mind and let me finish before any of you interrupt, or have me thrown in an asylum for lunacy. I mean, of all the crazy shit that's happened this last century, this is hardly a drop in the pisspot.

I swear upon Her Most Imperial and Apostolic Majesty Maria-Theresa II, Arch-Empress and Supreme me Autocrat of Austria-Hungary, Princess-President of the Unified Earth Government and Arch-Duchess of Luna, etc. etc. that I tell the truth. Fuck, I'll even swear to Saint Constantine the Honest if necessary.

I can see that I'm boring you with my little speech, so I'll just cut right to the chase then. Make sure you turn your PDAs and other electronics off and that your well-stocked on refreshments and snacks; this is going to be a long-arse fuckin' story. Pass me the _shein_, please, and then I'll get to the story... that stuff there... thanks... right...

This is how the story goes... this is the story of Landfall...


	2. Chapter 1: Goodnight Sol!

It was 2552: a new year, new page, fresh start for the people of Sol. The celebrations on Charon had gotten pretty raunchy by midnight GMT and the dwarf's moon had become a hedonist's paradise fantasy with adulty, sex, fights and drinks sloshing and foaming around like solar flotsam. Goddamn-near every vault of alcohol had been busted open for the occasion and the Outer Rim was quite well known amongst the inhabitants of Sol for getting pretty funky this time 'o year. They had a reputation to keep.

The fact that it technically wouldn't be a New Year for another hundred-and-twenty years for either Charon or Pluto was quite lost on the crowd, though they'd quite happily admit that that fucker was going to be a hell of a time and it was often advised to stretch a No-Nut-November out for a Terran year for maximum fulfilment; Casanova, eat your heart out.

Legions of prostitutes, geisha, comfort women, gigolos and escorts; both flesh and polymer could be obtained and there was more than enough to go around for the plentiful stock of off-duty miners pouring off the ships returning from the Kuiper belt by the bucketload; pockets and ballsacks full of cash and cum that needed to be blown somewhere or _into_ something.

Nuclear-boosted fireworks belted Plutonian and Charonian joy in orgasmic explosions of the artist's CMYK colours that could be heard as far away as Styx orbital tether station as man, woman, Asari, Turian, Batarian, Salarian and even Quarian stalked the streets with their open-stalled shops, cafes, restaurants and pubs that were awash in pink, oranges, reds and purples like some Venetian or Ottoman Red-Light District of yore. The insanity of the fucking way down there did not reach the frigate _Susquehanna_ one AU out, that had just terminated the end of its' slipspace jump, via Epsilon Eridani and was spooling both her fusion engine packs up for sub-light transit to a Martian spacedock, needing some repairs to a hull breach on the starboard-side: a parting gift from a Quarian cruiser that had decided the Susquehanna had strayed to close to the Migrant Fleet and overstayed her welcome. The frigate was nearing the end of her six-month deployment anyway and the _Droits de l'Homme's_ (the flotilla leader the formation tahat _Susquehanna_ had made a seventh of) AI had deemed the loss of the frigate as inconsequential to their mission and had given its' word of council on to the Commodore of the formation who gave her leave to return to Sol; the ship was eighteen and due for her third space-docking anyway; the extra twenty days would give the dock hands time to give her a little fix'r-upper before Gold crew carried out maintenance and exchanged ship with Blue crew.

The automated Navy station Bridel flagged the income warship and commed her:

/ BRIDEL STATION. SO. AI. RURIK UNSC SUSQUEHANNA. FFG-377-HEAVY

/ WELCOME HOME SUSQUEHANNA, I HAVE HEARD YOU GOT SPANKED BY A QUARIAN.

IS THIS TRUE?

/ THERE ARE MANY THINGS TO HEAR AND BE HEARD. ARE WE CLEARED FOR

DOCKING AT HOWARGATHY NAVAL YARD?

/ INDEED SO. PLEASE FOLLOW YOUR ROUTE PATH. I HAVE MADE SURE NO QUARIAN

SHIPPING SHALL IMPEED YOUR PROGRESS THERE. GOOD SAILING.

_Fucking bastard AI_, Cmdr. Felix Barstowe thought darkly in his deepest thoughts – so deep that that an integrated AI wouldn't have even registered the slightest tick from his brain activity as he watched the crew guide the ship in for a short run that'd take the ship within a quarter AU of both Neptune and Saturn as the Turian exchange student cadets tried there best to snag peeps of Sol when they though he couldn't see them. (He could, by the way).

He swivelled his chair back and watched the mapped solar system in miniature from the holotank behind his station and put his chin on his steepled fingers. He watched Mercury in particular: Sol's third, or technically second blue-green marble if you wanted to play it that way and his home. He wondered how big his little girl would have gotten. She was only six, but she could already lift her father up off the ground outside of a zero-gee court and damned if he wasn't proud of her.

The padscreen on his chair winked and beeped with a little buzz and his worn Pakistani features pulled away from the holotank as his thoughts did from the apartment they had down in Aldrin Str., Staten City and to the screen that told him he had a call coming; the sender was tagged as ONI, and not another artificial intelligence-managed station/habitat over Neptune or her fourteen moon. The neural implants bored deep into the back of his skull buzzed with the brain activity as his thoughts were translated into ones and zeroes; the many programmes that the interface contained carried out his wishes and took the call.

_Commander Barstowe?_ He heard somewhere inside of him; not quite in the ears, not quite in the brain.

_Yes, to whom am I speaking?_

_Major Sawdii, Office of Naval Intelligence. I am afraid to tell you that your ship's docking at Howargathy can wait a little longer, for we have need of your ship. I'm uploading a new set of coordinates directly to you now, please confirm._

In the periphery of his vision he could see a new thread of data that had come into being. It took the fraction of a second for him to process the information and he nodded, though he was none too pleased about the redirection. The gash in the _Susquehanna_'s side wasn't going to fix itself up and an ONI requisitioning usually meant a long redeployment, meaning he'd miss his short window to see Kathleen and Kerry back on Mercury as well as the next deployment to the Attican Traverse as they bumbled and fell over their own bootstraps to overtime-fix the wound, but noncompliance with ONI was dangerous and he quite fancied his job, so he confirmed and the spook terminated the conversation with a farewell.

'Helm, bring us around three-two-one degrees; altitude one-six-one; rotate by thirty.'

'That'll bring us by… Make-make, sir.' One of his young but eager and slightly confused alien cadets said as he mentally struggled to wrap his braincells around the 4D Mobius strip that was Makemake's name to a person that had never heard it spoken, but only read it in passing glance. Goddamn Terran spearchuggers.

'Indeed.' The ship's CO said simply and then pivoted to one of the few other humans sharing the room with him; Lieutenant Joshua Henley and told his old friend to start thawing the crew out in batches by shift and to get them fed and dressed. Henley did as he was told and he chipped into the UNSC's many bands, freqs and channels to requisition some automated repair drones from the _Downsing Habitat_ O'Neill cylinder to rendezvous with the Susquehanna three-and-a-half AU out from the destination along with a repair and replenishment ship.

Fusion thruster rumbled as they piled those meters-per-second on and RCS thruster sputtered here and there to reorient the ship for a new heading and Mercury grew yet dimmer as she passed by the sun and her orbital mirror caught the last of the glare before Illinois Commonwealth dipped into the dark as the geo-synced panel dimmed and his wife and daughter went to bed, expecting to ride the car out to Vittling Interstellar spaceport for a ship he wouldn't be on.

Henley told him that No 3-shift war unfreezing from cryo and no fatalities were recorded.


	3. Chapter 2: Cryo First, Munchies Second

Sometimes you hear horror stories from other career guys doing cryo – special forces-types, mostly – getting a two-month cinema ticket to relive bad ops gone wrong in fuzzy details. Hostage sit goes South and some magnate's daughter gets her head torn off by some juiced-up Eridanus insurgent or a squaddie puts his foot down on an IED left by Traverse pirates after a smash-'n-grab mission – that kind of stuff.

Got one of those myself when I was still a Corporal, NZRM back in '48 before I was made Sergeant. We were hauling a gig with some good Batarian operators on some desert-colony shithole beyond UEG-space to bust a slaving compound used by some local gang (I can't remember the names anymore). Everything was going well when we stormed the compound under gunship support until some Asari just shows up and obliterates half of 5 Troop. Must've been ex-military, because it took three Anvil missiles to put the fucker in the ground for good. After that I see why so many opt out of REM-sleep and prefer just to close their eyes and open them again when naptime's up.

Fortunately, when it came to dreams, I was always pretty fuzzy – despite all the implants they give you to boost your memory retainment – so the reel of Sarge Heward choking on intestines as Marine Pierre tried to aid him passed largely unnoticed by the frontal lobe as the reanimating chemicals booted the brain back up and my neural interface came out of standby-mode to tell me that sixty-five days had passed since I had entered the cryogenics pod – though that went largely unnoticed by me myself while I leaned on the side-handle of the pod like a child of some uplifted ape-species as the door swung up with a hiss and a small puff of fog that tumbled as warmer air rushed onto my skin to remind me of just how cold those fuckers are and then I puked bronchial fluids into the little built in water-fountain and sucked down a gutful of water that tingled.

I watched the whirlypool of vomit-saliva disappear down the hyperboloid drain as the upstairs department started booting brain function up again and a CPO walked in, dressed in freshly laundered fatigues, who told us in South European of old Terra to shower, get dressed and head up to the mess where the chefs and automated food dispensers where hopefully making something fresh, as was the norm for an unthawing crew to replenish lost nutrients and trust me, do those showers feel good after months of freezer-treatment.

It could've been better though; just your standard-issue 120-second allotment per man to keep the que as short as possible and to kill the showerline while those outside shivered in that odd limbo where you're not quite out of the cold of the cryo bay, but not quite into the warm humidity of the shower bay that led onto the changing rooms. (It was best to be second-in – that way you don't get the heat blisters, or have to stand around in the cold long enough your knob falls off, I've found in my years of soldiery).

I looked at the back of a wall of female muscle built like some old Greek statue and nudged my former battle-buddy spine. 'We're out twenty days early – what do you think that means?' I breathed over the hiss of thirty nozzles spraying water and the splatter of foamy water impact the ground.

She shrugged, half-turning so I could hear her better (as much as my implanted translator hated to), but not quite enough that I could see both heterochromatic brown-green eyes. 'Dunno. Been no call t'arms yet.'

'Here's hoping we're not boarding.' I smiled and looked around discretely to make sure neither officer, nor Sarge where looking, despite that I was the latter already – once a Corporal, always a Corporal, I guess. 'Remember when we boarded that freighter over Jupiter, en-route to Evamaria and Preston puked in his helmet after we told him he was going to be a father?'

The Yorkshirewoman brayed softly. 'T'Quarians would shit 'emselves if they saw that coming.'

We both laughed a little louder at that – loud enough to catch Preston's attention, who turned and leaned past the guy in between him and us to tell us to go fuck ourselves, which made us laugh a little louder like arsehole kids in a primary school and this time Lieutenant Wickham – the dull, monotonous Wickham who bored and scared everyone at the same – turned around and told us to be quiet; voice one of calm English aristocracy and voiced almost as a polite request, but like to little arsehole kids getting quite by one of the spare few teachers with backbone, piped down and waited patiently for our turn to soap up in standard-issue crappy Navy foam.

'Somethi-'

'Marine Childress, if I have to tell you to be silent one more time, I will break your arm. You will be quiet until you are in the mess hall – at that point can you mock Corporal Preston for vomiting in his helmet.' Wickham said and got some chuckles out of the Royal Marines and Navy personnel milling about in lines, that finally started moving again when the automatic shower cut-off came on at the CPO's behest so he could wave the next thirty in. Me and Childress (now that her name's been told) shuffled along and got showerheads opposite of each other in the middle of the room, far enough away from the Lieutenant that he wouldn't hear us in spite of marine implants, though not that either of us wanted to waste our precious two minutes getting clean.

So we kept our mouths shut and showered; lathering up in bubbled soap that quickly turned into cream and rubbing it in, until the CPO again cut our water access and moved our batch on for the next so we got pulled along with the general throng of marines and sailors into the dressing room where the whip and brush of towels on skin where the norm and conversations finally started booting up between the service personnel who were shouldering their ways into camoed fatigues or colour-coded suits; both with various chevrons are patches stencilled on.

Childress piped up somewhere behind the towel wrapped around my face: 'So, 'ere's 'oping whe're getting' off early. What're you gonna do?'

I shrugged. 'Go back, check the house, sleep. I was thinking about Arcadia now that my pockets are heavier. Gotta 'nother nine months now, so I reckon I have time to burn. That or the Citadel; see it without all the rush and bustle,' (what I said was also what most others were also talking, though I was one of the lucky camp – no one tying you down and lots 'o tax-free Credits to spend). 'What about you?'

'T'Citadel – want t'see me that new arena there… maybe also get kicked out t'casinos, too – then ah'll see.' The taller woman smiled a little and looked up at the ceiling nonchalantly – waiting for me to ask the _would you like to come with me?_, but I just smiled back; big and shit-eating enough to drop even an Indian tech-scammer dead on the spot. She batted her eyebrows and so did I, but my best bud always won the game inevitably, as she always did and I asked.

'Aye!' She boomed and hugged me hard enough I felt something pop under former the former rugby hooker's arms. I slapped her off and made the laces on my boots (an Asari make and non-UNSC standard, as allowed by His Most Britannic Majesty's Royal Marines, I am very grateful to say). After that and the lockers were empty and the projected name tags were wiped, we again rolled onward, like a herd of migrating animals down the halls and to the mess not that far away where another line had already formed and one that was long enough it ended in the corridor, but the cooks where goof at their jobs – the _Susquehanna_ being big enough she could warrant a catering staff over purely food dispensers (and the few she did have were more than enough to serve those too impatient for the que).

'The full monty, please.' I asked the old lady standing behind the counter who'd asked me what it'd be, as did Childress and we both walked away carrying heavy trays crammed with toast, eggs, bacon, etc. by the fucktonnes and nearly enough tea to outmass the Home Fleet. The food didn't last long before it was gone and Childress took the trays away while I carried out our sacrosanct ritual of lighting a pair of fresh Camels up with the oil-fired flame of a plain Zippo. I doled hers when she got back and replaced the lighter with a battered old pack of chipped and scratched art-deco cards. 'Fancy euchres?' I asked around the gold-tipped tab of genuine and glorious Turkish Egyptian and American tobacco that teased little curls of grey smoke.

'Sure.' She puffed herself, with a ring of smoke as she clutched the thing in between the middle and index fingers as someone shouted.

'_Do not call me Polly!_' Interrupted the flanging bellow of a Turian before something metallic hit the ground with a clatter that hurt ears. We both turned, mid-dealing the first hands to see Monroe Perry, our platoon's radioman in a bit of a standoff with one of the Turian marines we had onboard as well as their naval staff. Most of the cafeteria was staring in fact as the two stared at each other – the Turian angry, or at least as angry as they come, kinda hard to tell with the unbending cartilage and Perry halfway shit scared and panicking. Fortunately, our astute Lieutenant never leaves a brother hanging and romped right on over to the standoff with heavy, though swift thumps of his black boots – tailored like everything he said and did to make impressions on people.

We watched with that macabre glee you get when a childhood buddy just got kicked in the nuts and is rolling around on the floor as he came to a stop, folded his arms behind his back and politely inquired what all the fuss was about and got quiet conversation back out of both of them in turn while a pair of on-duty Royal Marines and Turians, both armed with pistols, batons and a part of the security detail pushed in through the peepers at the door to take the sit off the officer's hands, but he waved them off gently and told them both to shake hands, make up and drop the matter, lest there be consequences and the two did that: the seven foot alien marching off to join a table of her own people while Wickham stooped, gave the signalman his knife and let him scurry over to us while he took up conversation with the security personnel.

''Ey'up there, dick'ed!' Childress boomed a little too gleefully as he slid in next to her and Ian Stokes, our surly mortarman sat next to me, wheeze-laughing his arse off at Perry as others from our unit romped past, laughing, chuckling, ruffling his hair, patting him or just calling him a fucking bastard idiot.

'So,' I ventured and finished dealing the cards and tapping ashes into the little grey dip in the blue table's surface. 'What was all that about? Care to enlighten your comrades?'

'Never you fuckin' mind, mate.' The Aucklander said, though Stokes was more than happy to spill the tin of beans: 'That was his bird.' We laughed a little at the pun as Childress put down a Jack of hearts.

'_Ex-bird_.' The embarrassed Marine replied as he ate and one of the Turian marines agreed to stand watch by the back of the mess like an ominous gargoyle. I played a king and one the bet.

'She give you 'an 'andy while we were on ice?' Childress grunted. Ace of spades.

'Before that, you English cocksucker.' Perry gloomed. 'Seven year. We broke up last year.'

_Nine; a forfeit._

'That were a big oof.' The big lady beamed maniacally and patted him on the shoulder after trading a card from her deck.

'Like I said, suck my cock.'

'Why were you arguing with her?' I asked, throwing him a verbal lifeline to reel him back in to less humiliating lines of dialogue.

'I was trying to say sorry, actually.' He said and spilt tea over his toast. _Big oof move right there, buddy_, I thought – but he apparently had his own way out of further mockery when he told us why he knew we'd come back early: some techy off to fix a faulty cleaning bot had told the signaller that the ship had taken a collision from a Quarian cruiser while the frigates of the Attican Squadron were trying to head the migrant fleet off from entering Earth's rich hinterlands – apparently the Commodore had decided to put his balls out for all to see and ordered a line-astern formation to cut them off or make them divert: a Quarian man 'o war apparently had bigger purple nuts and rammed the Susquehanna: the ship's NAV computer had engaged emergency boosters to stop the ship from being torn in half.

'Said it was a fuckin' miracle neither the Isaac Arthur or Ad Astra ploughed into the back of us – we were traveling at several-million kilometres-per-second at the time. The Skipper's plenty angry, so we're headed back to Mars for repairs.'

'Our turn at last it seems? Are we destined to get the infamous Quarian touch?' I pondered allowed as the storyteller took his and the mortarman's trays away.

'Fuckin' hope not; I got myself family livin' out there on the frontier and I don't much like the idea of the galaxy's gypsies holding them and their systems hostage to cuckold us into paying them.' Stokes piped in after I offered him a Camel. 'They did that to the Raloi last year.'

'T'who?' Childress asked and played a queen of diamonds that trumped my jack while I dealt new hands to both marines.

'Hoo-hoo. They're the fuckers that look like owls. D'you see that bird-thing on the news at Ike's party?' (Ike being me, yours truly – Isaac).

'Nay.' She retorted and tapped the ash off hers and sipped some tea.

'Hmmm, still don't wan't the Quarians there – they suck all the stuff out; drop criminals onto your planet and then move on after they've haggled or stolen everything not bolted down. They should move the Nineteenth Fleet in to ward 'em off.'

'They really drops there crim'nals off like that?'

'Yeah, it's so there offspring can find their way back to the fleet.' I chimed and made the first move with an ace of hearts. 'Christ, poor fuckers don't have any colonies yet. Bastard way to start an interstellar business innit; having all your system sucked dry by some alien fat-arse that drops convicts off on your home.'

We all looked at Childress.

She raised her brows. 'What? T'least we 'ad t'decency t'teach you fuckers English first.'

We laughed and played our hands when overhead the speakers turned on and the bustle and chatter of the mess died down when the guy on the other end blew a brass whistle to bring the ship's attention to the ship's master.

''_Attention all hands, this is Commander Barstowe speaking. Doubtless as some of you may now be wondering why you have been taken out of cryogenic storage and as some of you have may already heard, I will confirm: we have indeed been rammed by the Quarian cruiser Idenna. As of an hour ago we were en-route to Mars for repairs but have since received new orders. We are now to make for Makemake in a trek that will take two-and-a-half hours to await new orders. The frigate Susquehanna's duties to the Imperium are not yet over it seems, and neither is ours, hence I expect her crew to serve with the devotion and care I have come to expect from you all. I will keep you apprised on the situation when I can.''_

The sailors whooped and the Turians cheered a little, as they'd been conscious for the frigate's entire deployment, seeing as they would not have been able to fit into the cryo tubes – that and it'd make for a pretty crappy learning-experience, though I do suppose it could be considered one if you counted the pains, aches and bruises. The Royal Marines largely did not and our game of euchre went on unabated. Stokes won the hand.

A moment later another voice came on: an automated news reporter that dished out the months' happenings:

_Continued negotiations between the Migrant Fleet's Admiralty Board to acquire a pair of old _Phoenix_ colony ships and an O'Neill cylinder had been severely hampered by the _Susquehanna-Idenna_ Incident. Turun Harkus had recently become the three-hundredth-million Turian to obtain UN citizenship. The freighter _Humbug XI_ that had been seized by Eridanus rebels to launch at a target in the Sol system. Arch-Empress Maria-Theresa had been invited as an honourary guest to the latest round of Citadel Council talks. The Halberd-class destroyers _Nathan Hale, Helen Ripley, Bill Paxton _and_ Corporal Hicks_ are to be commissioned by April-time and the UNSC-Council Cooperation Pact was to be extended by another thirty years._

'So the fuckers still expect charity, do they?' Stokes noted gloomily through a cloud of sweet smoke.

'As long as they pay for it, I don't mind. That way they fuck off and leave us alone. Now they can go and play terraformers on somebody else's doorstep. Christ, the thought of that fucking fleet coming to the Inner Colonies, or even Sol.'

'Think they'd run off with the Kuiper Belt?' I teased.

'If the Home Fleet weren't there, then yeah.'

Though we had no way of knowing it: outside of the _Susquehanna'_s Tanium-A armour, ablative plates, gel-seals and all that crap, an ONI Owl dropship had just matched speed and was firing its' starboard-side thrusters in little puffs to ease the craft into one of the six hangars on the undamaged side of the frigate. The Owl had an ONI spook onboard who'd come to give us the debrief on the situation and the imminent operation the skipper of the _Idenna_ had unintentionally drafted us into.

_**I put down a King of Hearts and won the hand.**_


	4. Chapter 3: Tikka To Ride

'Ladies and gentlemen,' the ONI man said about an hour later once the same Royal Marine who'd tried intervening in the mess hall fight came to get us to then cajole us into a briefing room usually held for the ship's airmen (even had those fancy-arse names sewed onto the headrests, too – pansy-arses). All twenty-eight Royal Marines and the twenty-seven Turian troopers were present – all had notes, recordings and data packages downloaded to all of our UNSC-approved devices to read at our leisure during the brief, so it was promising to be a new deployment, it seemed.

I sipped some tea and read through the papers tagged with marks, redaction, and **SECRET** stamps. The name _**operation: ANCHORAGE**_ was plastered everywhere I looked, but the ONI man was there to explain as a backup-redundancy, just in case. It looked to turn pretty interesting.

'About seven Earth days ago, about roughly quarter-to-six AM, GMT – one of our slipspace buoys at the edge of the system detected an anomaly – a few hours later, this anomaly was confirmed by other stations in Sol and in the Oort Cloud. At first, we assumed it to be an unregistered jump into Sol on an unsanctioned route. Half-an-hour later, the rupture was still open, and no registered ship had come out to be picked up on any of UNSC search equipment, hence the Coast Guard deploying the UNCGC_ Siege of Seringapatam_ to investigate.' An image of a black-hole in miniature popped up on the projector taken from one of the many cameras dotting the white hull of the cutter.

'Since then FleetCom has decided to lock the area down and post a screening detail centred around a cruiser. As we do not know where this rupture came from, nor who instigated it, but we are fairly certain that this is a naturally-occurring rupture and-'

'Marine Childress, kindly refrain from snacking during a debrief or I will severely hurt you.' Lieutenant Wickham said as polite as ever from upfront without even turning to look. Childress stopped munching Pringles and recapped the tube she'd snagged in passing off the ship's corner shop again as most of the eyes in the room turned to see what all the commotion was about. The debriefer was grateful of the crossed-arm officer's intervention on his behalf and continued:

'Thank you, Lieutenant. As I was telling you gentlemen – we believe this rupture to be stable: we have already made a number of transits to and from the rift with probes and Wombat drones,' (some declassified drone footage – both regular, thermal and all the spectrums inbetween – started to play on the backdrop behind him from a projector hidden in the ceiling with landscaped of greys and outcrops of stone jutting out that zipped by) 'with no negative side-effects other than losing range with them after several kilometres, meaning we have not been able to scout very far into it.

Hence FleetCom has decided to dispatch a scientific marine force over there for further research. You will make up the forward party and as a sign of the growing trust and cooperation between the interstellar communities we have decided that this will be a joint operation: at least for the time being that is. We have contacted your government and they have approved of the idea – the Salarians and Asari too, have also expressed interest.

Pelican transport will take you through the rupture and to the other side were you will proceed to scout the local terrain to assess a site for a mobile forward-operating-base to be deployed from the assault carrier _Fifth Winter_ once she and her escorts arrive in-system.'

Topographical maps with scribbles and notes, both by computer and by hand replaced the camera footage: a long and drab grey coastline stretched from both ends of the screen. It reminded me of practiced amphibious assault on Piha Beach's black sands.

'Expected deployment time stands at a week or two, depending on whether or not _Fifth Winter_ has any trouble in slipspace, though from there the Second USMC Division will take over security detail and you will be recovered and allowed an extended leave with compensated pay, along with certain benefits allotted to you by the Empress herself. Report yourselves to the ship's armory, marines.'

Some of us whooped and cheered at the thought and many of us clapped the ex-devil dog (or whatever daft thing they call themselves these days) in his dull grey uniform and the Lieutenant allowed it as we all dreamt of what we'd do with that cash and all the boys and girls out their destined to have their virginity slain by our hands and cocks.

The ONI officer waited for us to stop applauding to dismiss us and gave us a little nod when we stood – Wickham having given us the order to – and started shuffling out down the hall that led forward down the ship's metal spine to change and grab our bergen backpacks.

I fell into step with Childress, straightening the green beret on my head after having put it back on again. I looked at her. 'Pray tell me your thoughts, Marine Childress?'

She shrugged and binned the Pringles after horking down a fistful and I sniggered when she doubled and started choking. She clapped a hand on my triple-chevroned right shoulder and gasped. _'Fuckin'ell, don't 'alf make 'em sharp.'_ She straightened, rubbing a neck that was as thick as a car tyre. 'Dunno, but ah don't think t'ladies on Arcadia would mind me extra cash. What's-at new place? Royal Palms resort? Summit like that.'

'I'm assuming I'm paying for this?'

'Your mum was a doctor, ah might add. Ah got crapped out'tem Artificial Wombs. Thee's got plenty of cash, so ah'm merely liberating thee's conscious of it.' She smiled as the ship's armoury drew nearer still to where we'd be acquainted to the standard-issue kit that'd been allotted to us before we'd set foot on the ship five months back by some nameless automatic supply and distributions program. _No special-order on the down-low for you, mister Marine-man!_

So, I freed my pack of Camels out of a breast pocket and lit up again as we passed by a group of Navy men and turned into the room that had become our temporary home, even though half of us hadn't even slept a wink in there, but had still been required to make hospital-fold bed in the cramped coffin bunk cubbies and stack the cabinets, drawers and whatever other space we were ingenious enough to utilise with changes of clothes, kit and the few possessions we'd been allowed to bring aboard to amuse ourselves with in the off-time we had if we weren't already in the freezer.

I stopped at the first bed that was separated from the others by being closest to the door, so that I could thump any fucker who tried sneaking out after beddy-beds and distribute some of His Majesty's justice to a would-be curfew breaker – but other than that, bearing the troop's downward-facing triple-chevrons did come with its' perks as far as lodging was concerned on warships: bigger stowage and a single bed were just two (or at least the executive power to boot people out of the two other bunks below and above me).

I tapped the ash off the fag's tip into a little ashtray I kept in one of the trays under the bed's flip-up and locked the arm to stop it from breaking over my head and heaved the child-sized backpack off the lower bunk and started piling changes of clothes, fatigues, toiletries – the usual crap into each pocket that hadn't already been taken up to preserve space in our drawers or lockers (most UNSC bunk berths were big enough for fifty, and out troop was only half that).

Somebody tuned a radio into Sol's local oldies station (retro-futurism's still going in vogue these days) and we packed to the hums of Sinatra singing about a blue moon, though I did notice the apparent and dangerous shortage in my cigarette supply, Marine Garand was called up in front of me to remedy that conundrum I faced. I grasped hands with the fellow-smoker to exchange some Credits with the chips implanted behind the thumb and told her to get three big boxes of Camels and one of those God-awful Marlboro's she liked so much – perhaps a pack of beer, too?

She grinned and jogged away, green beret grasped tightly in a hand as she did and I went back to packing, already tucking another cigarette behind my ear like a mechanic does with a pencil for when the dog-end I still had on the go went out. The three boxes where emptied out so I could stuff the smaller packets into mess tins and empty boxes – Garand was given the honours of my blessing to light up with my Zippo and after that it was just waiting for Wickham to get back to us, so I floated around to watch everyone.

'Perry,' I asked the signaller laying down on his dirty lower bunk that had seen many a man and woman step on it as a ladder rung to get that little boost up to reach the actual red footbar on the middle bunk and would doubtless see many more. He looked up and I started fulfilling my Sergeant's duty to ensure the smooth functioning and operation of my superior's unit: 'Since we are to be deployed alongside the Turian compliment – and your ex-bird wants to rip your head off – do you think the pair of you can get along for two weeks?'

'I didn't start that fight if you're implying.' He quipped. 'I was trying to apologise, actually, she's the one who went total autismo.'

'I know, I heard, but for the sake of scientific curiosity, do you reckon you can survive each other for me?'

'Yes.'

I slapped him on the shoulder and smiled around the rapidly disappearing butt that was turning into smoke and disappearing up into ship's vents. No doubt a formal complaint would be registered on the ship's hall and dorm noteboards and the ship's computer would log it and try to find the culprit. Hopefully we wouldn't be around for all that long before my name showed up on shipboard wanted lists, though I needn't of worried as Wickham came into the room not too long later with his measured and calculated step: a walk and pace the shrinks can sit for hours to; writing and scribbling notes about how it reflected certain personality traits and the like.

'Are they ready, Sergeant?' He asked me in a one-to-one talk near the door after he'd beckoned me.

'Yes, sir.' I replied dutifully to my thinner, but taller colleague, folding my arms behind my back as men and women shouldered bergens and patrol pack, along with other miscellaneous kit and stood by their bunks as if on inspection day.

'Wonderful, take them to the armoury Sergeant, I will be with you shortly.'

'Yes, sir. Royal Marines, the armoury!' The last part I said in a loud, though not too loud pipe that got the men moving past me in a single file that struggled through the bulkhead door, teeter-tottering dangerously as they bent to clamber through. I was the last man out and killed the lights before closing the door and following them up the hall to the ship's monorail.

Men grunted and cursed – the usual shit you'd of expected to hear in one of 57 Commando's troops – as we struggled with kit to find seats or ceiling bars to hold on to as the tram got moving, trundling us up to the armoury lined with lockers, racks, hangers, and the likes to suit a man's every changing need with the bar-grated kiosks that separated us bootnecks from the armourers and their little playground of mass destruction behind them. The two women and one guy behind those bars looked like they were already trying to cadge our serials to link them back to the rifles that'd been doled out to us. Little green lights appeared next to the three-digit number plaques that marked each gun as a fourth armourer pulled the racks forward on their rails for easy access.

It got awful cramped and crowded when the bergens and patrol packs got tossed into the corner, but the Royal Marine is a resourceful creature and we made do and we started scanning fingers against the grill-cage-style lockers holding armour while the Turians came it and were surprised by the lack of space, though said nothing and got busy themselves while the armourers muddled around, unlocking cabinets and dispensing ammunition into the required magazines as we dropped the utilitarian M52 B-pattern vests – an icon of the UNSC Marines and its' face to the galaxy-over – over our heads and started working the straps down to keep the titanium-ceramic plates down, the many clicks, snaps and slaps of a pre-operation prep that filled an armoury while Turian marines helped each other snap magnetised plates to dark grey bodysuits: a strange clash of cultures between the _old is new_ patterns of the UNSC and the moderne flashiness of the Council. I think some of us watched enviously as kinetic barriers whined to life and their comrades tested them: only special forces got those toys and Misriah still hasn't set up a large enough production base to supply a multi-trillion contract order, so we would slog it with just the old fashioned plates and enough spunk it came out our ears.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Wickham was made to sign a pad one of the armourers had slid him when I was buckling my helmet onto my belt and sliding a battered Fairburn-Sykes that'd gotten me out of many a sticky situation into its' sheath before we were allowed to que up at the red-taped line on the ground and wait clearance to approach the kiosks, announcing _safe_ and _clear_ when they flipped the proffered guns over and were handed the ammunition to boot.

I lit up again inbetween securing thigh-plates and pauldrons and made sure to check for anyone mucking about. No one was, so I finished up and joined the back of the line where assault rifles, machine guns and battle rifles were being dished out to those at the front.

'_Advance_.' The Corporal behind the bars said and I did so when I finally reached the red line as she held an MA5C as old as my grandparents up for me to see the worn, but clean bolt.

'Safe.' I said to one side of the rifle. 'Clear.' I said to the other and did the same to a matte-black magnum with its' slide pinned back and empty. I approached and took both of these items of war from her as she stacked twenty magazines and a pair of hand grenades on the counter. Were the big dicks up top expecting us to run into trouble? The loadouts colourbands seemed half/half distributed between semi-armour-piercing high-explosive and tungsten-cored armour-piercing, so it must have seemed so as I crammed them into every nook and cranny of my webbing; secured the magnum and hoisted my rifle to sit back down to show my own higher-up that I was ready.

The cherry at the tip glowed contentedly and smoke swirled as I put the gun between my knees and watched the procession whittle away until every man in my troop was armed as they should: fifteen ARs (not including the three with grenade-launchers); 3 BRs; 3 LMGs; a GPMG; a mortar and three carbines: no attachments that weren't regulation; no mods or whatever Geneva Convention-breaking shit the kids these days called them.

'One Troop!' I hollered more like a Sergeant should, though still with the relaxed demeanour as I rearranged the fag over to the right side of my mouth to better shout: 'Bergens and packs on – you will jog from here to hangar six; starting now!'

Men and women saddled up again and I watched them go, clutching excess kit and empty rifles at their sides as they set a brisk pace for the Turians to keep up with; though I don't suppose we needn't of worried with the galaxy's equivalent of German people and their efficiency. Not wanting to be outdone, the Turians went off too and their pace was slightly faster than my lads', though I blame the gangly legs for that, truth be told.

When all three eight-man rifle sections were out the door and the armourers started pulling armoured shutters down, me, Stokes, Perry, and the Lieutenant started our own brisk pace to take up the rear; the jangling and rustling of equipment of webbing heralding our coming to anyone loitering around in the halls of the _Susquehanna_ assigned maintenance duty or not otherwise in their bunks or the mess hall.

'So, if I may be so bold as to ask, sir.' Perry ventured as he stuffed the waving antenna down his breastplate to stop it amputating someone's eye. 'Why'd they choose us for this job and not just some combat androids?'

'I do not know, Signalman.'

'Did you read the files he gave us?' Stokes breathed as the mortar he carried swung to and thro and clanged against the metal munitions backpack holding the 81mm ordnance. 'Said there were interference with signals. Apparently, the Air Force has already lost several Wombats.'

'Correct, Bombardier – we have also been tasked with recovering these drones if possible.'

I listened to further inane banter between the three as we jogged, hearing, but not interested enough to keep up as the conversation turned to more personal matters: Perry's folks or Stokes' bird with a bun in the oven – family stuff. Not something I had a great deal left of anymore. And so, I just counted the paces, listening to each thudding footfall that brought us ever closer to the Pelican dropships.

Meanwhile, leaving the rampant jubilance of the outer worlds behind them – no doubt many a man and woman in the Empress' commission mournful that they'd only be able to read about this year's festivities on the Extranet where reporters would tell tales of drinks so heavy they put full-grown Krogan down like elephant guns; or sex so loud the seven golden tethers were said to wail like the contact-railways of yore and the ten-meter-thick ultra-hardened glass was said to warble and hum with the _**whump!**_ of fireworks the yield of the Hiroshima nukes. The crewmen sighed – truly such torture to be so close yet so far from the most whickedy-whack party the galaxy has ever seen.

But as it turned out, Downsing had no free repair drones on the standby that weren't already engaged in maintenance on the habitat's point-defence-gun or in the workshop having older-model thruster packs overhauled, but a good Samaritan freighter skipper pulling holding orbits over 10370 Hylonome was kind enough to lend a pair of his own as he waited to be given landing clearance and offload twenty tons of helium/deuterium mix for the asteroid's fusion reactor, they'd rendezvous with him en-route to Makemake and set up a vacuum canopy so the _Susquehanna_'s boys could start clearing the debris for when the portable dock UNSC _Sustaining Maintenance_ got to Makemake.

Barstowe watched nothingness as the ship sped along at many-million kilometres-a-second; his plan to use the dwarf-planet's gravitational pull to turn the _Susquehanna_ the right way, then initiate a counter-burn to pull in alongside the _Count Zeppelin's Airship_, one of those new-fangled Autumns that just rolled off one of the Martian surface yards and had her trials cut short by last week's events; since then, she'd been stuck on a holding-pattern a hundred-thousand kilometres out of it with her MAC at half-charge as EVA workers and drones skittered over her hull like a colony of ants maintaining the colony.

The Martians may not have been too pleased by the rush-rush patchwork of the job that reflected the planet who's name was that of the god of war and who's people took immense pride in their shipbuilding, but the Quarian delegation residing in New Harmony were giddy now that one of the larger spacedock had been freed-up for their _Phoenix_-classes and work could carried out on both simultaneously before the Imperium backed out of its' generous offer and terminated the deal (Council-Imperial negotiations on the Quarian matter were also bogging down).

The time passed and in that time he'd given the bridge to his XO: some stuttering colonial fuck from the CMA on loan to the UNSCN, and took the elevator down to the hangar, where he watched his flightdeck crew skittering about like a packet of living gummy bears, with their purples, yellows, blue, red and so on. All doing something vitally important like stocking Pelicans with powerloaders and forklifts that lumbered here and there to cram stuff into every corner available as a deck elevator clanged to a halt and a pack of URO Humvees were rolled off.

He watched from the flight control booth way up at the top of the hangar as a troop of marines, both Human and Turian romped over to the green dropships to away boarding, though he didn't stay for overly long, soon he went back up to the bridge so he could relieve that soulless ginger from command of his vessel. By the time he'd made the round trip and was making his way down the sterile UNSC-patent grey halls, he could feel his steps were lighter. He knew that the ship was making its' quarter-orbit already and soon the ship's bow thrusters would start tooting to bring them up to a halt.

There was the usual ritual of a ship's CO coming onto the deck and he went through the dog and pony show quietly with a nod and watched the holotank's little projections of a frigate; some stations and the dwarf-planet-home of many billions along with Haua, its' pitiful little excuse for a moon with its' fantastic mere two skyhooks. Deep down he smiled and the neural network's health-monitoring programmes noted the increase in brain activity in the ship's medical logs that were beamed back to Earth every 48 hours as the Commander remembered his grandparents taking him to the Royal Navy's old model warship collection on hot Summers during younger days.

He felt the little shudders rumbling back from the double-boom bow and new that they'd started firing engines in reverse to slow down, so he put a hand on the rail and watched as the holotank shrank the dwarf-planet and its' satellite out of view and grew the frigate and the small task force holding station off a red blip. _Oh, what he wouldn't do to be back on Mercury with its' ugly pockmarked land and helder blue oceans_.

Up above the ship's computer gave another news report: most of it just the same old, same old and some of it new, like the Raloi embassy being opened in Sydney or a UN spokeswoman officially announcing the rift to the human and interstellar community. Barstowe ignored it as the bulky silhouette of an Autumn-class went from being one of so many dots of black on the glass that the human brain would probably explode from trying to count them to an actual looming war machine.

'_Aaaaand_, we're in. _Susquehanna_ to _Count Zeppelin_, we're in position and ready to couple.' The helmsman said as a small jet of air vented out of the bow thrusters on either side of the frigate's main gun, bringing the ship to an absolute and total stop next to the bigger one.

'_Understood _Susquehanna_, extending the docking arm now.'_ Someone replied on the other end as the telescoped cylinder started clunking out silently in the void, heard only by the guard stationed at the airlock who heard the whir and clunk with every section that locked into position and felt it up his boots. A few moments later the cruiser let them in on that as the arm reached its' apex and locking arms groped at the rim of the airlock and curled in like fingers to seal the two tight. Air hissed as the umbilical started to pressurise and it became safe for human passage.

A Rear-Admiral and a Captain were coming over to make a courtesy call, but Commander Felix Barstowe's role in the grand scheme of things had come to a close as the Pelicans had the turbines of their fusion engines spooled up and the last of the pre-EVA/flight checks were being carried out by the pilots and the hangar was being evacuated for decompression.


End file.
